Alternative to Xamarin and Cordova

Comparison of WaveMaker with Xamarin and Cordova

Mobile has swiftly risen to become the leading digital platform. What started in the consumer space has now also engulfed Enterprises. Every application within Enterprises that is being redesigned, recreated or freshly created starts with a Mobile initiative today.

While a native app provides the best user experience, developing native apps is a costly affair. It requires developing the application on each device separately and requires highly skilled developers who can code in Objective-C/Swift for iOS, and/or Java for Android devices. Many enterprises want to balance the need for great user experience with simplicity and speed of developing the application. This is where hybrid mobile apps come in. With hybrid mobile app development, businesses can create apps using a single code base that can adapt to any mobile operating system. Did you know that by 2016 more than half the mobile apps deployed will be hybrid?

Hybrid mobile apps are built with a combination of web technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript using frameworks that provides set of APIs to access device capabilities.

Xamarin vs Cordova vs WaveMaker

Two of the most popular mobile app development frameworks are Apache Cordova and Microsoft’s Xamarin. However, both of these frameworks have their shortcomings. So, how do you choose the best framework to deliver mobile apps for your enterprise? Here we provide a detailed comparison of the Cordova, Xamarin and WaveMaker to help you choose the right platform for your mobile app delivery needs.

Development and Testing

Xamarin

Cordova

WaveMaker

Mono .NET, C# based solution for cross-platform mobile. But, you still need to know Objective C or Java

HTML5, CSS3 & JavaScript

Basics of JavaScript syntax

Need platform-specific development environments for building apps. Mac for IOS, Windows for Windows Mobile etc.

Development can be done on any platform

Browser based RAD Studio, for building apps for any platform. Cordova-based

SDK installation and regular maintenance upgrades need to be done for development